BorrowLenses.com is at the 2013 NAB Show in Las Vegas! If you are here, too, please come visit us in booth #C9550! We have great cameras for folks to try out and other surprise goodies, including a chance to win a free rental from us! Not at NAB? That’s ok – take a virtual tour with us below. Here are some of the shots we were able to take during quick breaks. See more here and here.

BorrowLenses.com is at the 2013 NAB Show in Las Vegas! If you are here, too, please come visit us in booth #C9550! We have great cameras for folks to try out and other surprise goodies, including a chance to win a free rental from us!

Not at NAB? That’s ok – take a virtual tour with us below. We’ll be posting pictures and videos all week so be sure to check our blog for more fun footage!

Welcome to Cool Stuff, a weekly feature where we post our favorite links from the past week, including our favorite articles and how-tos, videos, images and more.

We start with a bit of a blast from the past. One of the editors, Eli Sinkus, at 522 Productions took an audio narrative from photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and overlaid it onto a touching and inspiring B&W film on what inspires him.

There’s no shortage of lighting modifiers for small flashes like the Nikon SB–910 on the market today. From the Apollo softboxes we rent, to grid kits, snoots, umbrellas, and beauty dishes, small flash has really come into its own, especially for photographers working on location.

Now there’s a new accessory for Strobist-style shooters that will let you use a much wider variety of softboxes with your existing small flashes, including the high-end modifiers from companies like Profoto. I used it with two Profoto softboxes a couple of weeks ago for a portrait, with excellent results.

Now, we’re not going to be able to provide the castle, the swimming pool, the giant print or the model, but we will soon have the Hasselblad H5 line of cameras in our rental inventory. Here’s what photographer Henrik Sorenson did with one of these gorgeous machines.

Welcome to Cool Stuff, a weekly feature where we post our favorite links from the past week, including our favorite articles and how-tos, videos, images and more.

We love it when one of our own gets a nod from someone we admire. Our very own Alex Huff was mentioned in this week’s episode of Photography Tips and Tricks, by none other than R.C. Concepcion. Have a look at the end of the video below.

Any time Philip Bloom does a gear review, we tend to drop everything and listen. Here, he breaks down the Canon 1DC for you. As usual, it’s a thorough, full-featured review.

This one’s for the retouchers among you. The guys at PhotoShelter have established a reputation not just for being a great photo hosting service, but also for bringing you some fantastic original content via their blog. In this webinar, they talk to veteran retoucher Amy Dresser about her process and technique – and it’s worth watching every second.

And finally, from the “If he opens his mouth to talk, you should be quiet and listen department,” the Phillipines’ 24/7 cable news network, ANC, sat down with Joe McNally for a really good interview.

Not too long ago, I switched to the Nikon D800E with a series of prime lenses for all of my primary photography. I love the Nikon, and it’s proved to be a fantastic system, capably handling just about everything I’ve thrown at it.

The downside is that it is, truly, a system. A big, heavy system. I quickly found myself looking for a smaller, carry-around camera for some of my more photojournalistic endeavors, and immediately turned to the family of mirrorless cameras out there for an answer.

I’ve had the Olympus OM-D E-M5 for the past few weeks now, and have been using it as my primary “take everywhere” camera. It’s small size, lens selection, and great image quality combine to provide a system that’s flat-out my favorite in this category. In this article, I’ll present my experience shooting with this little thing, rather than a full-on technical review.

Rent a Sony Alpha or NEX camera/lens from us first and save money off the purchase price! We’ve partnered with Sony Style stores across the nation to provide our customers with a discount when they buy!

Off-camera strobes and other forms of lighting have become remarkably approachable over the past few years. The knowledge and information that were once the sole province of pros working with tens of thousands of dollars of equipment in studios or on location is now all over the internet for the taking.

We carry a fair amount of lighting gear, and given that we cater to the novice as well as the pros, we also answer a number of questions about one particular piece of lighting gear: the softbox. Over the phone, via email, and through our social networking outlets, we respond to queries ranging from the number of stops a box’s diffusion fabric will eat, to “What’s a speedring?”

This article is designed to help you understand the various pieces of a softbox and how it is used with a studio light like the Einstein E640 or the Profoto D4 heads we rent.

Welcome to the first ever BorrowLenses.com Holiday Gift Guide. Here, we’ll be listing some of our favorite cameras, lenses, and accessories that you should consider for the photo geek you’re shopping for. We’ll break this list down by category, so you can easily find something for the shutterbug in your life, no matter what their experience level is.

Let’s start with that all-important question – what camera should I rent?

Cameras

We broke this section down by category, from pro-level to the new mirrorless cameras.

Cameras (pro-level)

It’s received some of the highest ratings ever given to any camera by testing company DxO, and has been universally lauded as having some of the best dynamic range capabilities ever packed into a DSLR, and is competitively priced, too.

Welcome to Cool Stuff, a weekly feature where we post our favorite links from the past week, including our favorite articles and how-tos, videos, images and more.

This week, we start with the trailer for an upcoming documentary on Alexandre Deschaumes, called Ethereal Photographies. Have a look at the trailer and you’ll see why.

From one French photographer to another and from the wilds of the earth to the streets of France, we next bring you the work of photographer Philippe Echaroux, who came up with an awesome project to photograph strangers on the streets as though they were celebrities.

And finally, from our friends over at Profoto comes a truly magnificent collection of lessons from some of photography’s masters. Masters like Gregory Heisler, whose Time Magazine cover of Rudy Giuliani is an absolute marvel of contextual lighting (see the embedded video below). Other masters in this series include Jeremy Coward and Matthew Jordan Smith, to name a couple. Go check this collection out – it’s worth every second of your time.

That’s it for this week’s Cool Stuff. As always, questions and feedback are welcome in the comments below.

This is Part 2 of a series on using Tilt-Shift or Perspective-Control lenses. In this part, we look at the “Tilt” functionality of these unique lenses. Part 1, which covered “shift” functionality, can be found here.

At some point in time, we’ve all seen photos where the subjects – usually views from high-up of cars, buildings, people, etc. – appear to be miniaturized versions of reality. This is perhaps the most the most often-seen result from using tilt-capable lenses like the Nikon 85mm PC-E.

In this part of our series, we’ll explain how this effect is achieved with tilt-shift lenses.